Make Peace With Your To-Do List Before It's Too Late

There's a moment of reckoning that comes to every ambitious soul clutching a To-Do list a mile long.

My moment arrived on a Tuesday afternoon when I found myself staring at "reorganize food cupboards" sitting beneath "learn French" and "research how agriculture started in Mesoamerica" (don't ask).

There were more. Many more.

The realization hit me like a gentle slap from reality: I was never going to finish this list. Never.

Never.

Never.

Not this week, not this year, not this lifetime.

Ah. It was the most peaceful and liberating Tuesday I'd had in months.

The Bonfire of the To-Dos

I used to treat my To-Do list like a sacred scroll, each item a solemn vow to Future Me.

But Future Me, it turns out, is just as overwhelmed as Present Me, only with worse posture and more regrets about not redecorating the living room in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and now apparently 2025.

So I did something radical: I took that list and fed it to a shredder.

Not literally – although the mental image of watching "deep clean the porch" get chomped into satisfying ribbons did bring me unexpected joy.

I fed the list to the shredder of a mind thoroughly fed-up of dragging around the weight of undone tasks haunting every moment.

I sat there, emotionally detached as a meditation guru, watching task after task get ceremonially destroyed.

"Reorganize food cupboards"? Whirr, chunk. Gone.

"Learn to make my own bread"? Whirr, chunk. Deleted.

"Read all those books stacked by my bedside"? Whirr, chunk. Obliterated.

Each shredded task felt like releasing a small balloon into the sky. A tiny weight lifting from shoulders that had been hunched in perpetual anxiety.

The Gentle Art of Scattering Tasks to the Wind

This stuff bloody works, you know.

There's something almost poetic about the moment you stop fighting the current and start... floating downstream.

I began merrily scattering tasks to the wind like dandelion seeds, trusting that the ones meant to land would find their way back to me when the time was right.

The bathroom mirror that's been "needing replacement" for eight months? Away it goes, tumbling into the ether. It'll land eventually somewhere. Maybe next spring. Maybe never.

The elaborate meal planning system I was going to implement to combat my growing middle-aged paunch? Away it flies, dancing with the dust motes and settling into the realm of "someday, perhaps". (I'll eyeball my meals, take more exercise, and see how things go.)

This is more of strategic surrender than giving up. It's recognizing that not every task deserves the same real estate in your brain.

Some deserve to be evicted entirely.

Precious Eggs in the Basket

What remains after the great shredding is something beautiful: a small, manageable collection of tasks that I cradle like precious eggs waiting to hatch.

These tasks aren't the shoulds or the somedays.

These are the tasks that survived the winnowing because they genuinely matter to me, right now, in this season of my life.

"Finish reading the novel I'm actually enjoying"? That's an egg worth protecting. A few hours of uninterrupted reading every day is a requirement for me, not a luxury.

"Plan a night out with the friends I'm starting to lose touch with"? Another keeper.

"Organize the chaotic set of drawers that actually drives me crazy every single day"? Makes the cut too, because it's small, achievable in half an hour, and will bring me immense satisfaction.

"Finish the coding project I've been working on for years that might actually earn me some money"? A slam-dunk. Instant, unchallenged, #1 priority.

I tend to these remaining tasks with the clucking care of a mother hen. – not because I'm anxious about them, but because I've chosen them deliberately.

They're no longer wearisome obligations. They're invitations to spend my time on things that align with who I am and what I actually want to accomplish.

The Freedom of Finite Energy

I have finite energy. It's too precious to waste on tasks that don't bring me joy or move me toward goals I actually care about.

Every minute spent agonizing over undone tasks is a minute not spent on the things that matter.

I'll stop trying to be the person who has perfectly organized food cupboards (though I admire those people from afar).

I'll stop pretending I'm going to become fluent in French by next month.

I'll stop forcing myself to want things I think I should want.

Instead, I'll became the person who reads the books he enjoys, who calls friends when they need it, who keeps the important things tidy - and lets the rest of reality go on existing however it feels like.